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Oct

30

2024

From The Blog

2024 Fall Road Paving Completed; 83 Roads Upgraded Since 2022

The island’s roads can have a big daily impact on members’ Kiawah experience. On the island, we expect that members use the roadways every day, multiple times a day, and in 2021, KICA’s board committed to improving that experience with an upgrade to the island-wide road standard.

The 2024 portion of the project is now complete. During this project, 15 island roads were milled and replaced, including larger sections on Blue Heron Pond Road and Surfsong. (While the road paving is complete, some punchlist items are still being addressed by the contractor.)

 

AN UPGRADED STANDARD

In 2021, KICA’s board of directors voted to use some of the contributions to reserves (CTR) fees from the island’s real estate sales to fund an island-wide upgrade to roadway standards. The island’s KICA-owned roadways were rated by an outside engineering firm and all roads were categorized as ‘poor,’ ‘fair,’ ‘good’ or ‘excellent’. The board’s adopted standard means that any roadway rated poor or fair will be repaired to the standard of excellent, and maintained in perpetuity at a good or excellent rating. Every two years, roads are comprehensively evaluated and rated by outside engineers.

 

CONSISTENT PROGRESS

From 2021 to 2023, KICA improved all roads rated as poor or fair and now conducts regular evaluations to maintain the standard. In 2023, roads that had slipped to a poor ranking were repaved. In 2024 and 2025, the board has allocated $2 million to uphold the association’s road maintenance standard and address the most recent round of fair roads. Following the current round of paving, 83 island roads have been brought up to a rating level of good or excellent. There are currently no KICA-owned roadways rated poor and 52 roads rated fair, which will be scheduled for update in a future project.

 

REPLACING 5 YEARS EARLIER

Bringing roadways up to the new standard is anticipated in KICA’s annual Reserve Study. Each year in the Reserve Study, the remaining life of the island’s roadways are projected for budgeting purposes. Previously, the useful life was projected to be 20 years; now roadways are scheduled for replacement after 15 years, five years earlier.

While this change meant a large financial investment from the community’s Reserve Fund over the past two years, the commitment to maintain at Kiawah’s higher standard is a perpetual benefit to island property owners.